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2 years ago I started a company with a system administrator and I don’t regret any bit of it. I have been asking myself why this is, because I have seen other system administrators starting successful companies as well. Maybe you should have a system administrator in your management team as well, and this is why:

We have been getting spin-off coaching from Innotek and Dirk De Jongh, one of the coaches, taught us some really important lessons, one of them being: a company is a machine, and the only thing we need to do is turn our start-up ideas into one. And he is right, I would even dare to go further with that metaphor: a machine like a company needs a system administrator, someone who creates the right scripts, someone who updates internal mechanisms from time to time, someone who runs tests and so on.

source: XKCD.com

Get a system admin on board and your machine will be scalable, it will be started and downtime will be minimized, your machine will focus on one thing and will be great at it, you will use the right tools for the right job, perfect load balancing, when tasks are done repetitively, a sys admin will write a script, and last but not least, a sys admin is devoted to the machine.

A company is a machine. That’s what I will remember for the rest of my life.

Disclaimer: this works for me. In my current life I’m mainly an author. I don’t write a lot of books though. I write mails, websites, business plans, blog posts, preparations of presentations, about how and why I made a decision, program code, and so on.

For every task you do in collaboration with others or for others, there are several generic steps. Not doing one of these steps may make your work a burden to others rather than something useful. Most task are for others and some people even manage to make their own another person. Some people manage to make other people their own, but this is another issue.

When you’re not going to do a task instantly, add it to your todo list and communicate the timing to the person who gave you the task.

Make a plan. On paper. Sorry trees.

Do the task, and write documentation pseudo simultaneously. People (this includes yourself) will want to work on it later on if it is valuable what you are doing, so you better write good documentation.

Report to others that you have done the task. That may include writing a blog post about it, or it may be writing a short notice to your supervisor.

Scratch it from your todo-list. Even if you didn’t add it in the first place. It feels good, doesn’t it?

Mobile Vikings was my second mobile phone operator. Before that I was a pre-paid Base customer. When I switched, as a student, to Mobile Vikings, I kept paying the same amount of money (€15/month) for almost unlimited text messages and got free Internet with it: 2GB a month. The step was as logical as can be: I get more for the same money.

I’ve changed. Mobile Internet changed how, where, how long, with whom… I work/study. It didn’t only change the way I work, it also made me start contributing to iRail to change the way we plan our travels: Just in time using a smart-phone, not 1 day in advance when you can be doing more interesting things instead of planning. Mobile Vikings made me think free Internet everywhere is an evidence.

In February I started my own company together with @Tuinslak called FlatTurtle. We are developing an architecture which will change the way digital signage interacts with users than it does now, but let’s not go into that. Yeri (Tuinslak) and I thought it would be better to change to a “more professional” network and get invoices and sh… stuff. So we tried to sign up for a new sim-card through Proximus’ e-service platform. That didn’t work, so we decided to go to one of these Belgacom Centers to make us a Proximus client.

The network is better. I agree. But it’s still not what you’d call a problem-free experience: you still can’t have a call during a trainride, and the network is still disconnecting from time to time. I have the unlimited business bundle (“fixed” price €80 without VAT), which allows you to call without limits. And you have 1GB of Internet, and unlimited text messages. So apart from the unlimited calling, I’m not getting a better experience for a lot more money. If you want numbers: I’m paying on average €110/month (without VAT) as I’m regularly abroad having to take calls as well which you have to pay on top of the “fixed” price, and pay for the bus by sms.

Today I got a text message. I have 90MB remaining to use during the rest of the month (3 weeks). It’s true, this 1.5 week I have been on the train a lot (had to go to Hasselt, Antwerp, Leuven and Brussels a couple of times) so I have been tethering. I went to the e-services platform to check on my use and to maybe upgrade my package to something more than only 1GB. This seems impossible. Or at least I didn’t find out how to work with it.

I was used to Mobile Vikings: you send a tweet to @mobilevikings at 11pm and you get an answer immediately. Even if the tweets contained angry messages about technicalities*, you can still get understanding replies. Mobile Vikings’ site is impeccable. I had no idea however how to contact Proximus so I tried to old way: calling the center, which I gave up after 10 minutes (sorry, I’m not giving up on certain standards of living I acquired before).

* With Proximus, I didn’t even had to think of these, as my expectations are lower: do you expect Proximus to provide an API for their advanced users?

Today I handed in my thesis for a degree in applied engineering. It feels good to finally have the result of one year of work and absorbing knowledge right there in your hand.

The purpose of the dissertation was to develop a module upon The DataTank in order to allow developers to work with more appropriately structured information from multiple data sources through a single call. The result of this was a language we designed for this thesis called SPECTQL. You can test it over here.

Before all else, a literature study researches the meaning of open data, the leitmotif throughout this dissertation. Besides discussing current legislation on open data and copyright, the organisation of Apps for Ghent, an open data event, have been discussed. The second part of the literature study focuses on the relational model, explains semantics and gives an introduction to the Semantic Web.

The community of iRail has always been about being open and transparent. The board, Christophe, Yeri and Pieter, have never kept something from the mailing list and never something has been left undiscussed on one of our meetings. This was true until June and I hope this post will help to understand our conformist actions which we now regret.

Let’s get to the point. We have been talking to the MIVB/STIB, the bus and subway company for Brussels about using their data and doing some projects in parallel with our plans for building a mobile website, mobile games and info screens using data from De Lijn (which we can access thanks to @BartNelis). After all, MIVB/STIB was the first company to work to be integrated Google maps, and the first to have a real data sharing policy. We even seem like the ideal partner for this data sharing program: we’re a non-profit and the slogan «let’s move together» could have been ours as well!

Too much words have been used for expressing the harm patents can cause to innovation. Even huge corporations like Google and Oracle (at least in 1994 they were) or even Microsoft (when they only had 9 patents in 1991) are known discouragers of patents. In 2006 Microsoft filed its 5000th patent and in 2009, only 3 years later, this number has doubled. These big corporations use patents not to stimulate their innovation, but to defend themselves from other big corporations who might eventually sue them. This seems to be an easier approach than checking the trillions of patents that have been filed before.

Oh, I take this personal

The first touchscreen devices were brought to the market 20 years after a patent application for touchscreens. Imagine yourself with touchscreen technology from 2030. Yup, could have been you today. Or do you wonder why you can’t buy your playstation 3 today? Did you know that whenever you buy an android HTC device, some of your money goes to Microsoft?

Becoming one of them

I’m starting my own company soon. No big news, just a small step towards a bigger picture. As I have noticed that these companies started to have a huge patent portfolio I thought I should write my arguments down so you can confront me later if I would have gone mad.

Patents are expensive. Not only the registering itself is expensive but you will have to pay for a lawyer to translate your idea in the right words or it will be worthless. Once you’ve actually bought the patent you still have to hire a team of lawyers to check on other companies yourself, because there is no such thing as a patent-police, and finance the lawsuit yourself. For small companies this is infeasible, unless that’s your business model.

Everyone wants to protect their intellectual property. It’s normal: I don’t want to see another company filing a patent-application using my idea and suing me over it! In Europe however there’s no need to buy defensive patents. This is because in Europe we have a «first to invent» policy. This means if you have a patent and another company can proof they have had the idea before you, your expensive patent is worthless. Just make sure that whenever you have had a great idea you can proof it. There are various ways of doing that: you can write it down and put it in a timestamped locker, you can tell everyone (the best way for an idea to mature is telling it over and over again) or you can simply apply for an «open» patent.

If your company is innovative you won’t need any patents. Once you actually implemented a great idea (otherwise you wouldn’t think about a patent) it will be too late for other companies to start exploiting this idea as well. In the end, ideas are worthless, you need a vision.

I agree that for some other markets where ideas need over 20 years of research and development, prior art won’t simply cut it. Taking a patent however in current legislation is rarely used for the good (read: stimulating innovation). Therefore, as with the copyright system or the federal government-system of Belgium, reform is needed: everyone is aware of this, it has been assigned to someone and no one is ever going to do something about it.

– Pieter

P.S.: I might be wrong. If so, I would be pleased to be corrected in the comments or on the twitters